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Friday, 27 January 2012

My little trip to the Falklands wasn't entirely free of miniatures, I did take a few and some paints with me. As such I now have 40 married Zulus and 32 unmarried Zulus painted. You'd think that 72 Zulus plus their leaders would look like a massive lot. Unfortunately it really doesn't. I also got most of the way through another ten British infantry. While I was away the mega cheap purchases from Maelstrom arrived so as well as the metal Brits from the original box I now have outstanding:

24 British Infantry (plus ten to finish).

32 Unmarried Zulus + leader (built and undercoated).

64 Married Zulus + 2 characters (still in boxes).

Both main buildings, built but still in the process of texturing them up before undercoating and painting.

For the last couple of weeks I have been in the right hemisphere for Zulu based goodness but the wrong hemisphere to make any progress. That said, I did get the opportunity to visit one of the best King Penguin colonies in the world. As an added bonus I didn't have to spend 4 hours each way in a Land Rover and spend $300+ for my fare. Instead I spent £15 and got there by helicopter . . . . . which was nice :)

Anyway, if this works then there's a few (of the 100s) of the shots that I took at Volunteer Point by way of explanation for my lack of blogging over the last couple of weeks. That and the fact that I couldn't seem to access this site from the wrong side of the equator!

Saturday, 14 January 2012

Alas progress continues to be slow as I continue to be forced to work for the "living" that pays for my miniatures habit.

The MDF bases that I ordered some weeks ago arrived today. They are of very good quality, equal to the fine produce of Renedra in my humble opinion but slightly cheaper. I spent a long time thinking about how I would base my Anglo-Zulu chaps and eventually decided that for Rorkes Drift I would actually mix the bases up a little. I am planning to use the Black Powder rules that Warlord publish but would like to have the flexibility to use other rules if I so desire or the chaps from the club make me :) As such I've gone for square bases with four zulus on each with a goodly number of single bases scattered amongst them for good measure.

Anyway, the last dregs of my current bottle of PVA were deployed to stick these chaps onto bases which will need a good couple of days worth of work to get them all textured and looking acceptable if not nice.

It seems like I've been painting Zulus for an age and yet it seems that I really haven't produced much yet.

Tuesday, 10 January 2012

Work is back up to its usual tricks of keeping me away from the paint station. However, over the weekend I did manage to get time to assemble the buildings from the set. I was most impressed by the quality and how it all went together. The instructions were okay, not brilliant but good enough. The only real snag was that a sprue was missing from my set. It was only a little sprue containing a small piece of roof and a ladder. I emailed Warlord on Sunday and the missing part arrived today. You really can't ask for better customer service than that!

I assembled them using bog standard PVA. Only when I tried to work out what the spare bits were for did I realise that they were actually glue spreaders that were supplied as part of the kit - a nice touch! I've then started painting on a finely textured paint on the plastered areas, hopefully this will help to achieve the rough African look by the end. At the moment it just looks a bit messy! Oh and yes I did knock one of the pillars getting it out of the cupboard to take the photo. Anyway, enough waffling, here's the buildings:

Well the "opus" continues to prove to be of almost Biblical proportions!

I have spent much more of this period of leave doing things other than painting than I planned to. It does mean that I sit here on my final day of leave a lot less stressed than I was a few days ago. However, it also means that the project is taking a lot longer than originally planned.

Over the last couple of days I have painted one Induna for the unmarried Zulus that I finished last week. He actually has the wrong shield pattern as I only read up on the significance of shield colour for Zulu regiments last night. As such he will eventually be the Induna for the 2nd unmarried Zulu regiment that I will be making and painting as soon as I get to them! I've also nearly finished the first ten married zulus. The first ten of forty that is!

I got home the other day to a card from the postie that they're holding a parcel for me. I hope that this will finally be the bases that I ordered a few weeks ago as these chaps really need basing. Anyway, here they are: